


birthday boy

by circus (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/circus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean just pops up one night in the middle of nowhere, and he's like magic to Sam. Magic and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birthday boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Batman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batman/gifts).



Sam tossed. These nights the air was so hot and the moonlight so bright, there was almost no way he could sleep. He couldn’t wait until his stupid growth spurt was over and he could finally get a bed that his legs didn’t dangle over the edge of. He sighed and glanced at his calendar, then the clock on the wall. Sixteen in an hour. He didn’t feel like having cake, or a midnight snack, or a cheese omelet, or macaroni - heck, he didn’t feel like having _sleep_.

He sighed, getting off his bed and standing up. The slanted ceiling almost touched his head, and he stooped slightly, making his way to the handle in the floor. He pulled it up, and climbed down the red, rusting ladder, onto the second floor of the old warehouse.

The stacked cans of age-old dried paint stood around him, waiting for him to do something, comforting and familiar. He sighed. “I guess I’ll take a walk, then?” he asked no one. The cans stayed silent. “But wait, it’s half an hour to midnight. It’s late,” he mused. The walls echoed him. “ _Late, late, ate… t_.” He’d lived around the echoes long enough not to be spooked by them anymore. Still, his spine gave an involuntary shiver as he pushed the thoughts of time away and walked resolutely towards the stairwell. As he began to descend to the first floor, he swept a quick look around him, eyes narrowing, before he shuffled down the stairs again.

__

The walls of the warehouse weren’t the only things that echoed at midnight.  
The cracked pavement rebounded the squelching of his sneakers that were still wet from yesterday’s rain, but he didn’t mind. It was kind of reassuring, like someone else was walking with him, and that he wasn’t alone.

Because Sam was a loner. He didn’t really know what was wrong with him, but he’d never fit in. He preferred staying at home than going to summer camp, talking to girls about art class instead of flexing his biceps (he didn’t have any to speak of anyway and he wasn’t really interested in working out to get them). He liked his sandwiches with lettuce, cottage cheese and cucumber and homemade ketchup, not meatballs slathered with mayonnaise and dripping messily with chili sauce like the others in his class. Not even the girls were as tidy as him. If he were someone else, they’d have picked on him, but he was tall. Sam Winchester was tall. Tall like legend. There was no getting around him. He was a living tree, bang up in everyone’s view, except much better looking. In fact, Sam was kind of hot. Kind of hot doesn’t get you to society, though. Sometimes being kind of hot just estranges you further. So Sam, as aforementioned, was a loner. Growing a year older in the next half hour didn’t excite him. There was nothing wonderous for him to do, no unicorns to fly to his bidding, no fairies to pop up and grant wishes, no mother to bake him a cake, no father to pat his head, nothing.

He liked walking though, so that’s he was doing right now. Not that walking was anything special, he did it everyday. But still. It was nice. And the pavement kept echoing the sound of his shoes.

He rounded the corner, rolling his head up to the sky, watching the clouds slide over the moon, the stars flicker green and pink and then white again (the stars in Kansas liked to shine different colors before turning plain old white). A car roared by, tail lights slashing through the mist that was quickly gathering around. Sam sighed. Maybe he should turn back now. He could just sit up in his bed in the warehouse and wait for the minute to pass and he’d wish on a star or something stupid like that and then he’d just go to sleep. Why was he awake, anyway? It had been three years since he last stayed up ‘til his birthday minute.

“I’ll just wander around,” he said out loud, to nobody in particular. The mist clung to him and around him, turning almost impossibly quickly into a fog. “Excuse me?” he laughed, unbelieving, into the air. “This is summer? Since when are fogs supposed to happen in summer? At midnight?” There was no answer, but the air hissed at him, freezing the tips of his ears, as if cursing at him, telling him to leave. Sam hunched his shoulders and frowned, persistent in walking the whole length of the block before turning back.

Right then, he heard a strange sound, like a tire giving way to a hole, slowly. _Ssssssshhh_. The yellow streetlight messed with his vision, the shadows of the gate behind him throwing sharp black stripes on everything he saw.

And at that moment, he saw a person. The light distorted the color of the boy’s hair to a fiery, impossible painted kind of yellow. He had a sharp bridged nose that seemed to flare at the nostrils slightly at the sight of him. Sam stepped back, uncomfortable.

He was also a teenager, this sudden stranger, but the look in his eyes told Sam he’d seen things. _Done_ things. “I’m Dean,” the boy said, after a long period of scrutiny, and extended a well-kept, long fingered hand from his black jacket.

Sam eyed him. Dean grinned, and Sam was drawn to his perfect teeth. “I’m not going to bite,” Dean said, voice husky, and chuckled at his own words. Sam felt uneasy. _Was he missing something? Wasn’t this abnormally sudden and strange?_

“Sam,” he ventured, and his hand caught the other’s in a steady clasp.

Dean’s grin faltered. “You’re brave.”

“Am I?” Sam made a face. “More of stupid, really. I’m turning sixteen in a couple of minutes and I just befriended a complete stranger in the middle of a bleak night on a dark street.”

“And now you wax poetic,” Dean rose a blonde eyebrow.

“Phases of growing up,” the taller one shrugged. “You want to come home with me? I don’t have anyone to celebrate my birthday with.” _Wait, what did he just do. What._ His brain wasn’t even questioning him, it was sluggish and didn’t quite understand this rapid series of events - no, not events, exchanges.

“Sure,” Dean smiled. The streetlight glinted in his eyes and Sam’s brain numbly registered that Dean’s eyes were jade. The prettiest kind of jade he’d ever seen.

“So… what do you do, Sam?”

“Me? I’m still in high school, a sophomore. But I want to write. I like writing. Reading, too… Haven’t really shown anyone what I’ve written, though.”

“Why not?” Dean shivered, hunching his shoulders.

“No one’s really interested, I guess,” Sam laughed, breath clouding in front of his face. He didn’t notice that Dean’s eyes widened slightly as the little cloud cooled into little icicles on his lashes, that Dean stopped walking for a tiny second just to look at him walk.

“Well,” Dean said, eyebrows furrowing against the growing cold, “I’m interested in what a tall sixteen year old who wanders around empty streets, such as yourself, writes on bleak nights.”

Sam looked at him sideways, startled. Dean was grinning, cheekily. _That sort of adorable shouldn’t exist._ Okay. His brain either didn’t work or it didn’t help on the rare occasion it managed to function.

“It’s not like I write well…”

“I’m curious, that’s all. I won’t insult your work or anything,” Dean persisted.

Sam frowned. “Are you a tramp?” he asked, after some silence. Dean grinned again. “No, I earn my living. My work’s strenuous. Lots of physical labour.”

“You have muscles?” Sam asked, wistful. Then he started. That sounded kind of wrong.

“I can show them when I’m not about to be frozen to death,” Dean rolled his eyes, amused.

Sam started. “I’m sorry, do you want a jacket?”

The other boy stared at him. “You would seriously give me your jacket in this weather?”

“I have two sweaters underneath.”

“Nah, but thanks. Already have one, can’t you see?”

Sam mentally kicked himself as he nodded. Of course he saw! What was his problem?

They shuffled together through the wrongly-timed flakes falling on the pavement, in amiable silence.

“Well, we’re here!” Sam exhaled, making a dramatic flourish to the rather intimidating structure in front of them.

  
“Your dad runs this place?” Dean questioned, staring up at the warehouse.

“Um, sort of. No one lives here except me, though.”

Dean smiled. It was a knowing smile, one that saw right through Sam’s lie, but Sam missed it as he unlocked the door for Dean to enter. As soon as Dean stepped inside, though, he bristled.

“Something the matter?”

“I don’t like so much… lack of light.”

“You’re scared of the dark?” Sam smirked.

Dean hissed. “Look, it may sound _sissy_ but - “

“It’s cool,” Sam chuckled, taking Dean’s hand and leading up the stairs.

__

Sam didn’t remember much of the rest of the night. Except for one big thing. That comes later though.

But there was Dean, and there was alcohol.

Lots of alcohol. Too much alcohol. And it went to their heads.

“You’re fun, Sam,” Dean smiled.

“Uh-huh?” Hiccup.

“Yeah! Gimme your number, we should hang out sometime later.”

How Sam actually remembered his number after five bottles of beer he had no idea, but gave it to Dean.

They talked about things as the sky out the window crept from deep indigo to a light violet and finally a yellowish blue with a pink star glittering, waiting for sunrise. Things like home and bread and ditches in the road and the way the wind sang and how rain fell and how deliriously boring long summer days are without anything to do and blue cheese and how ugly fungus is. Nice things, comfortable things.

“Y’know, Sam,” Dean slurred, some hours later, nine o’ clock sunlight falling on the both of them, “You’re biologically an adult - ” _hiccup_ ” - ‘xcuse me. You’re biologically an adult and your ovaries - wait, sorry - ” _hiccup_ ” - I mean _balls_ are pretty much ready to do stuff. I should tell - ” _hiccup_ ” - ah, you should know some things I should tell.”

Sam didn’t really get it but he didn’t really care. He preferred tracing lazy circles on Dean’s leg, which he was now doing. “Hmm?” he managed, eyelids drooping.

“Y’know the stuff in fairy tales?”

“Unicorns?”

“I wish, Sammy,” he laughed, the nickname rolling off easily. “Not unicorns. Demons… and fairies. Werewolves. Those sort of things.”

“Let me guess. They’re true?” Sam whispered into Dean’s ankle, head lolling on the elder’s shin. Dean’s foot twitched.

“Yeah, all that’s true. There’s witches and things, Sammy, you should be careful out there.”

Sam didn’t really understand what Dean was saying, but he knew Dean was talking, that Dean was a friend, a strange, new, _pretty_ friend, that Dean’s voice poured into his ears the way his favorite company’s caramel topping melted on his tongue, that Dean was stretched on his back and his eyes were shining and his cheeks were flushed.

“Mhm, sure,” Sam nodded, sighing.

Dean’s other leg was bent at the knee, waving slightly to and fro on the floor, because Dean liked doing that while he talked. Sam didn’t know, didn’t care, was far too buzzed to think. He simply lifted his head and bit lightly at Dean’s leg, behind his knee.

” _Sam_ ,” Dean gasped, suddenly frozen.

Sam liked the sound of that, so he did it again, on Dean’s thighs this time, his position shifting predatorily, almost, bending low over Dean, careful, caressing. Sam liked the softly spoken string of curses that Dean let out, whispering quietly, bathing Sam’s ears in caramel and velvet.

“S-Sam,” Dean choked on his own breath as the younger boy nipped at his hipbones, tracing his tongue over them curiously. “ _No_ ,” Dean’s hands held Sam’s jaw as if they’d been molded to fit and tugged Sam’s face. “Up here,” he growled, bruising their lips in an almost painful collision.

They surfaced after a bit, chests heaving against each other, and Sam carefully licked the sweat off Dean’s upper lip.

Sam liked it when Dean moaned, but he liked it better when Dean growled.

The caramel melted to tiramisu and the velvet changed to gravel, and it made Sam sore all over, every part of him throbbing, from his hair to his lips to his very fingernails. It hurt but it still felt nice somehow and Dean’s hands satiated the pain, the way they roamed all over, heating him, working against the cold that the wind brought in from the window, making them shudder into each other as the breeze laughed at them, telling them to carry on.

Sam remembered Dean moaning his name, remembered Dean biting into his shoulder, he remembered the feeling of Dean straddling his waist. Dean standing behind him in the shower, rubbing soap gently over his arms, Dean drying him with a towel and buttoning his shirt for him, Dean singing him to sleep. And most of all, Sam remembered Dean promising him he’d stay.

He hadn’t.

Sam had woken up on the bed sometime in the afternoon, a fresh dent in the pillow and a shadow of warmth next to him, the slight echoes of someone hurrying down the stairs calling to him. He should have gone, but something held him back. He promised. If he promised, he meant it. He’d come back.

__

Sam went to school, worked, overworked, ran, turned seventeen, decided on his career, worked out, grew even taller, got muscles, got a 4.0 GPA, got a girlfriend.

What he _didn’t_ get was why Dean mattered so much - why he looked out the window, late at night with Jessica clinging to his back as they lay in his bed, and searched for the star that twinkled green ( _it reminded him of Dean’s eyes_ ), why he liked to make Jessica angry sometimes ( _she growled his name then, just like Dean had_ ), why he kept the blue towel wrapped carefully in plasticine ( _Dean had used that one that night_ ), why he never touched the sandalwood soap bar and never bought one like it again ( _Dean had used it on him_ ), why he hated listening to Paperback Writer by The Beatles ( _he sang it after the first bottle and Dean had said that he sang well_ ), why he always stopped under the streetlight on the end of the block, watching, listening. _Why?_ He didn’t even know Dean’s last name.

His train of thought was interrupted by his cellphone ringing out.

Sam stared at the screen. _Withheld number._ Only Jessica called him, and he had her number saved.

“Hello?”

“Sammy! I’ll be at your place around eleven. You know, for your birthday. How about it?”

“Dean?”

“You remembered me!”

“I’ve _missed_ you, jerk.”

“Don’t insult me! Bitches do that.”

” _Jerk_.”

“ _Bitch_.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

  
“I know.”

Sam hung up, biting his lip as he grinned out the window.

Sure it was summer, but that didn’t stop a tiny snow flake from floating in and landing on his nose.


End file.
